Popular quotes about Socialism! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Without calculation, economic activity is impossible. Since under Socialism economic calculation is impossible, under Socialism there can be no economic activity in our sense of the word All economic change, therefore, would involve operations the value of which could neither be predicted beforehand nor ascertained after they had taken place. Everything would be a leap in the dark. Socialism is the renunciation of rational economy.
Ludwig von MisesTo the masses, the catchwords of Socialism sound so enticing... so they will continue to work for Socialism, helping thereby to bring about the inevitable decline of the civilization which the nations of the West have taken thousands of years to build up.
Ludwig von MisesInstead of poor America on socialism becoming more like rich America on capitalism, rich America on capitalism is becoming like poor America on socialism.
Star ParkerA society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.
Ludwig von MisesThe fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality. East is West and West is East, and soon the twain will meet.
Will DurantThose in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of socialism implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of socialism which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike.
William O. DouglasYou must have, if socialism was to succeed, a socialism with lots of democratic elements in it.
Stefan HeymThe issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. The time has come to regenerate society - we are on the eve of universal change.
Eugene V. DebsInflation makes the extension of socialism possible by providing the financial chaos in which it flourishes. The fact is that socialism and inflation are cause and effect, they feed on each other!
Henry HazlittOnly the defeat of the proletariat in Germany in 1923 gave the decisive push to the creation of Stalin's theory of national socialism: the downward curve of the revolution gave rise to Stalinism, not to the theory of the permanent revolution, which was first formulated by me in 1905. This theory is not bound to a definite calendar of revolutionary events; it only reveals the world-wide interdependence of the revolutionary process.
Leon TrotskyLess than seventy-five years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won.
Robert HeilbronerIf governments do not ensure that, the peoples through their own efforts will ensure these changes, what we call communitarian socialism.
Evo MoralesIf Obama's vision of the public sector is socialism, then so too were the visions of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.
Jeff GreenfieldWith a profound first-hand knowledge of participants, encompassing linguistic competence, and engaging prose, Padraic Kenney recreates the simultaneously serious and playful currents of East Europe's overthrow of repressive state socialism. What an invaluable guide to the elusive exhilaration that motivated the actors and captivated all of us who followed the transformation with such hope! We can appreciate neither the ebullience of 1989 nor the disappointment with the quotidian reality that followed without understanding Kenney's 'carnival.'
Charles S. MaierI recognise that Socialism has ended its purely theoretical course, and that the hour to construct has come.
John BurnsThe American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.
Norman ThomasThe socialism of centralised state control of industry and production, is dead. It misunderstood the nature and development of a modern market economy. It failed to recognise that the state and public sector can become a vested interest capable of oppression as much as the vested interests of wealth and capital. it was based on a false view of class that became too rigid to explain or illuminate the nature of class division today.
Tony BlairPoliticians, bureaucrats, editors, new commentators, 'economists' teachers,' and other word artists who denounce private enterprise and praise socialism are their own worst enemies...these attackers are unwittingly destroying the sources of their own livelihood. They kill the geese that lay the golden eggs - and don't know it!
Leonard ReadSocialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement. It is by no means an obvious remedy for the obvious evil which the interests of that class will necessarily demand. It is a construction of theorists.
Friedrich August von HayekI remained a socialist for several years, even after my rejection of Marxism; and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society.
Karl PopperIt [Socialism] was a kind of political hockey played by big, gaunt, dyspeptic girls in pants.
Mary McCarthyWe're going to fight racism not with racism, but we're going to fight with solidarity. We say we're not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we're going to fight it with socialism.
Fred HamptonSocialists don't like ordinary people choosing, for they might not choose Socialism.
Margaret Thatcher[T]rue socialism must be voluntary - not coerced. Even in the most complete system of society we can conceive the individual must still have rights and property. He must appropriate food to sustain his life. He must wear clothes which are his. He must have his private and exclusive apartment, and must have the right to be in some place on God's earth from which he cannot be evicted by landlord of society.
Joshua K. IngallsEvery system tries to get people to conform to support that system. That goes for communism, socialism, free enterprise, or any other civilization. If they don't demand loyalty, they can't keep their civilization together. So what they do is they teach things that would support an established system. We do not advocate an established system. TVP talks of an emergent system into state of change. So that we always prepare people for the next changes coming ahead. So that people will not cling to the past.
Jacque FrescoSocialism and capitalism are both essentially materialist, just different ways of approaching the lifeless world of matter and deciding how to share the spoils.
Iain McGilchristLiberalism and capitalism address themselves to the cool, well-balanced mind. They proceed by strict logic, eliminating any appeal to the emotions. Socialism, on the contrary, works on the emotions, tries to violate logical considerations by rousing a sense of personal interest and to stifle the voice of reason by awakening primitive instincts.
Ludwig von Mises[The healthcare bill is a] headlong rush into socialism....we will not stand for the Obama-Pelosi-Reid hijacking of our freedom and democracy so they can impose their socialist 'utopia' of higher taxes, restricted access, inferior quality, and deadly inefficiency on the best health care system in the world....You and the RNC are all that stand between the Democrats' scheme to take more of your hard-earned income to pay for this unsustainable, freedom destroying entitlement and an opportunity to work for real, truly bipartisan step-by-step solutions.
Michael SteeleWe got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.
Fred HamptonNational Socialism would have every German decide for himself on spiritual questions, just as in the days of Frederick the Great. The National Socialist state gives to the church what belongs to the church, and to the state what belongs to the state.
Rudolf HessWe did not adopt socialism out of books, abstractions, humanism, or pity, but rather out of need for the Arab working class is the mover of history in this period.
Michel AflaqAs with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.
George OrwellSocialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all . . . . It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain
Frederic BastiatHillary Clinton, President Obama, they're trying to turn the American dream into the European nightmare. We need to rescue the country from socialism.
Bobby JindalThe problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples' money.
Margaret ThatcherSocialism is an attack on the right to breathe freely. No socialist system can be established without a political police.
Winston Churchill... If Mr. Kennedy does not like Socialism, we do not like imperialism. We do not like Capitalism.
Fidel CastroFrom the viewpoint of economic democracy, the capitalism-socialism debate was a debate between private and state capitalism (i.e., the private or public employment system), and the debate was as misframed as would be a debate between the private or public ownership of slaves.
David P. EllermanNow [in China] within the framework of socialism - which is really social welfare in a social democratic framework - all they want to do is to get the kind of economic growth of the capitalist world. It can't be done. It creates the same kind of problems as in the capitalist world.
Harry Magdoff